Event Horizon
by BananasFoster
Summary: AU. A young Loki steals something he shouldn't have. Centuries later, a young Jane becomes the host of a power she doesn't understand. Their paths cross by fate, and a reckless friendship blooms as they struggle to understand the power they have stumbled upon. But nothing goes as planned. Set pre-Thor through Avengers, diverges from canon after that. Jane/Loki, Jane/Thor.
1. Chapter 1

_August, 1992_

Jane had been waiting a whole month for this moment.

"Dad, look! It's Venus!" she breathed excitedly, jamming her face into the eye of her new microscope. The fuzzy outline of Venus stared back at her, so much closer than when she looked at it with her eyes. She adjusted tuning instruments on the side as if she was an expert. And if the telescopes she had obsessively looked up for weeks in her catalogues were any indication, she basically was. The telescope was easy, and absolutely magnificent. Her dad had bought it for her birthday, and she had immediately squealed with breathless astonishment, demanding its immediate use that very evening. Night had just fallen, the last streaks of color leaving the sky, and now she was gazing with a focus she only ever reserved for stars and multiplication drills. She had been staring at planets ever since she was four, but now, _now_ she could get closer, could actually look through space and see this tiny speck in her sky from her tiny back yard. It was mind blowing.

"I know, baby, it's beautiful," he chuckled, and ruffled her hair from behind her.

"It's blue," she said seriously, reaching for her notebook she always kept with her at night, and began roughly drawing what she saw without glancing at the paper.

"Remember Janey, just because it _looks_ blue-"

"Doesn't mean it is, I know, I know." She looked back over her shoulder at him, annoyed and amused she hadn't thought it first. He smiled fondly back at her, the light from the kitchen framing his tall shape.

For a while she remained at her new gift, her small back hunched over as she strained to recognize each dot in the sky. After a while her eyes flicked down to her rough sketches of Venus and various stars whose names she did not yet know, her small hand splaying out across her hard work.

She wished mom were here, wished mom came for her birthday, and gave her gifts, and knew how much looking at the stars meant to her.

"Thanks so much for buying this for me, Dad," she said, avoiding his eyes as a sudden emotion she couldn't describe washed over her. Embarrassed and unable to look her father in the eye, she turned back to her telescope, swinging it around to locate Polaris. For a while there was no sound behind her but the background chirping of insects at night. Then quietly, she felt her hair being lifted and parted, her dad running his fingers through her hair to softly detangle it.

"Anything for you, Janey," he said simply.

Jane felt her heart swell more than she thought her eight year old body could contain. They sat in silence for an hour more, Jane trying to locate the stars she knew while her father stood braiding her hair.

Something flashed by her field of vision through the telescope, straight down. A moment later, something struck the ground twenty feet in front of Jane, and she felt the tiny vibrations of the impact reach her. Shock won her for a moment, and then she realized what had happened. She gasped loudly, running across the backyard.

"Jane!" Her dad came right behind her as she bent down to peer into the miniature crater. Black smoke curled into her face. She waved it away impatiently, blinking through the tears to see a chunk of rock, glittering blackly in the light of the moon. It was jagged and entirely unimpressive, but Jane couldn't help how transfixed she became. This was from _space_ , this had fallen right at her feet, for _her_ , it was beautiful-

"Jane, don't touch that!" Her father jerked her outstretched hand away before it could touch the still smoking rock. "Honey, that thing just blasted out of the atmosphere, leave it out here until morning."

"Dad, no-"

"Jane." He fixed her with a stern look and steered her by the shoulder back to the house. "We'll get it in the morning. Pack up your telescope and let's go to bed. It will still be there. I promise."

She stuttered angrily, lost for words. It was right there! It could have Martian dust on it, or gas particles, or something alive! But her dad's hand on her shoulder was immovable and she didn't want to upset him after he had bought her something so wonderful.

The next morning, she dashed out of bed and ran barefoot across the grass to pry the black chunk from the ground and haul it to her room to poke and prod.

The rock turned out to be just a rock. At least her dad was still impressed.

* * *

Thor was an idiot and they would all perish because of it.

This was Loki's main source of anger and the only thought that throbbed in his mind as he ran beside his brother, the hallway behind them caving in on their heels. From the depths of the spaceship they were fleeing came a roar of rage so powerful the ground beneath their feet shook.

Thor laughed carelessly, his red cape their mother recently gave him to mark the start of becoming a man billowing behind him. "Come and get me, Collector!" he shouted over his shoulder. The entire ship lurched.

Loki desperately hoped the roof that was currently collapsing would pin Thor by his beloved cape.

They rounded a hallway, at the end of which stood two green beings with black orbs for eyes, clicking angrily in an unintelligible dialect and raising weapons at the brothers. Grabbing Thor by the back of his cape, Loki shoved him to the side as a burst of black energy flew where he had stood a moment ago. Green crackled underneath Loki's skin as he let the magical energy within him coalesce into something hot and tight. Before the next blast of black energy could reach them his arms shot violently forwards, and from it flowed his green energy. The black energy scattered in the charge of Loki's magic. The beings at the end of the hall hit the ground, grisly popping sounds erupting from within their bodies as their bones began to rearrange.

"Well done, brother!" Thor clapped him on the back and pushed him forward. Loki grinned despite what his stupid brother's actions had brought them to. With a firm thought and a minor hand gesture, Loki sensed where Sif and Fandral waited for them, and collapsed the hallway to his right to block the incoming creatures.

"You know, you could have at least tried to _sneak_ into the Collector's vaults, your footsteps made more noise than a Jotunn skipping rope." He gritted out, collapsing the hallway to his left with considerable effort.

"Move," he said to Thor, who was busy admiring his stolen treasure with a foolishly greedy expression and ignoring him completely. They made it to where Thor's friends waited at the portal Loki had recently learned to create.

He felt pride swoop in his stomach that it had held up through their mission. It was a portal wedged into one of the crevices in the cliffs by Asgard's sea, in a place where space time bent and shifted irregularly. He had discovered it quite by accident when he had been hiding from Sif after dying her hair raven black. The rare look of surprise on his face to find himself suddenly in an Alfheim field, blinded as the Light Elves engaged in a magical ritual had surely made him quite a sight.

"Thor, you great fool," Sif said playfully, coming away from the warping edges of the portal to punch him in the bicep. "You were supposed to be _discreet_ , not have the walls start caving in."

Her words were sharp but her tone was teasing; Loki suppressed a scoff at her obvious intentions. She and Thor would make a good match, if only for that reason, and the fact that they both craved battle like a bilgesnipe craved mating.

"But look at what I have stolen from that bumbling Collector!" Thor boasted loudly, holding up the burnished chalice in his hands for all to see. Fandral's eyes lit with barely contained curiosity. He began to ask, "What powers does it possess-"

A blast of black energy shot straight over Loki's head, the sizzling heat of it burning his scalp. Those cursed beings. Several things happened at once. Thor roared in pain as the energy blast hit the raised arm holding the chalice. The chalice arced through the air from the force, drawn to Loki's portal. Simultaneously, Loki's arms swung out to his sides and came straight together in front of him, drawing on that ball of energy within that he kept tightly wound. Sif screamed her battle cry but it was useless; Loki's magic thrust her and the rest of them through the portal.

He landed next to Thor on his hands and knees on the harsh rocky floor, the groans of Fandral and Sif echoing behind him. Blasts of energy flew over their heads relentlessly, scoring deep marks in the far side of the cliff wall. Loki flipped over with lightning speed, flicking his wrist to close the portal. As it got smaller he could see the ugly creatures advancing, could hear their infernal clicking, as the portal's eye shrank to the size of a coin.

It disappeared.

Leaning back on his elbows, he tried not to tremble with giddiness, a wickedly satisfying look spread on his face. Loki turned to Thor, who was oafishly trying to stand, and tenderly holding the charred part of his arm that had been hit by dark energy. He refused Sif's outstretched hand.

"Does somebody need a lesson in waiting until you've won to gloat?" he asked snidely, dusting himself off as he stood. He looked the best of the four of them, Sif and Fandral having amassed small cuts on their faces and smeared with the cliff's rocky dust. Thor's new cape was layered with grime.

"Silence, brother, this arm still has enough strength to knock you to Svartalfheim."

Loki only shook his head as Fandral triumphantly rose, holding Thor's precious chalice. Thor's arm was going to give their entire adventure away.

Frigga punished them for a year following the incident. Thor had tantrums every other week, smashing his furniture, and when that did not satisfy him, pounding his fists against the walls so forcefully that Loki's window cracked. Thor's friends all blamed Loki's magic for tempting them in the first place.

Loki paid no mind. He spent his confinement learning about the small item he had stolen from the Collector without telling Thor. The small purple stone contained in a silver orb, that no matter what means Loki employed to try to touch it, sent him flying backwards into the wall each time.

* * *

 _May, 1993_

Jane stomped off the bus and tried not to trip through the tears. She finally let them fall as the bus drove away. Today had been awful, and her dad was probably waiting for her at home after having an earful of her teacher, her principle, and Joey Maynard's mother describe to him exactly how many times she had hit Joey in the gut and how, an hour later at recess, he had ended up completely upside down, dangling from the monkey bars by his shoelaces, screaming her name and crying. His own snot had run down into his hair after a while. Jane had been swinging innocently thirty feet away when help arrived.

The image resurfaced in her mind and made her giggle through her tears despite how much trouble she was going to be in when she got home. That had confused her teacher and principle more than anything; that all four feet and two inches of Jane Foster had managed to somehow haul a hundred pounds of stupid Joey Maynard upside down and tie him up. They kept fixing her with the teacher look that reaches in and hauls the truth up out of fourth graders like a fish on a hook, and asking her who helped her. How this was bullying and all bullies needed to "recognize their errors".

Jane had just said she worked out a lot at home. That was when they had picked up the phone and called her dad.

She looked up as her house came into view and she groaned. Her dad wasn't waiting outside for her like normal. That meant trouble. The only other times he had been in the house after school was when mom had left and grandma had died. She wiped the drying tears from her cheeks, but clung to her anger in the face of her imminent butt kicking.

He was waiting for her in the kitchen next to the phone, as if she needed the clue. She felt her anger simmer. Her dad had always treated her like an adult. She did one thing and suddenly it was this nonsense. Her backpack hit the floor a little harder than normal.

"Don't roll your eyes, Jane. This is serious." Her dad pushed away from the counter and approached her. "What were you thinking? It's not like you at all."

"I don't know!" She burst out, feeling her tears climbing up again. "He was so mean to me all the time dad," her tears reached the top and overflowed. "He made fun of my drawings of black holes. He kept saying I wasn't a normal girl like the rest of them, 'cause the other girls draw ponies and houses. Which isn't fair at all. Darcy draws someone she calls Bob Marley wearing a cape and saving the world with music and a flying poptart. He just wants to hurt my feelings because he doesn't like me."

She ran out of breath, and gazed back at her dad, not feeling sorry at all. He kneeled in front of her and took her shoulders. The lines in his face stood out like they did when he was upset.

"Janey, I'm glad you understand why Joey bullied you like he did, but that's no excuse for your actions. They can't prove that it was you who tied him upside down, but they did see you punch him. You can't punch people because they say mean things Jane."

"Dad, you don't get it. Sooner or later he would have done what I did to him."

"Then that's when you punch, Janey". Despite his serious demeanor he winked. She giggled and he wiped the tears off of her cheeks with soft eyes. His tone became serious again.

"I mean it. If someone is about to hit you, then you hit them first. That's okay, even if it gets you in trouble at school. But don't hit because of words, honey. You know so many good words from those crosswords we do together. Outsmart them if they're just throwing insults at you, okay? Don't waste all those good punches on guys like Joey."

Her shoulders slumped in his hands, and she stared at the ground as the rightness of his words set in. Her dad stood up and smoothed his hands over the front of his button down like he always did after Jane cried. "Okay?" he asked.

"Okay," she replied hoarsely, the anger she felt earlier dissipating into a cloying sense of shame that made her want to curl under her blankets. She never got in trouble at school. And now everyone would whisper. Maybe Darcy, the only one she actually liked, would start avoiding her.

"We'll talk about your punishment later. How does a grilled cheese sound, hm?" Her dad was rooting around in the cabinet for a pan, and did not see her face as anxiety bubbled in her stomach at the thought of going to school tomorrow. She struggled to breathe and red crept into the corners of her vision. She saw red

There was a colossal crashing sound, and the entire floor shook. They both jumped, and Jane screamed. Her sight cleared. Her dad ran into the living room, where the sound had come from. Jane ran after him, her heart beating unsteadily. She nearly tripped into the wall from dizziness. She paused and clutched at the door frame. In the living room, her dad's huge book case had fallen from the wall, lying face down in the middle of the floor. It had swiped the side table, and had brought a lamp, two glasses, and one of Jane's notebook down with it. Glass glittered from where it was embedded in the carpet. Books were scattered everywhere. She flicked on the light.

Her dad cursed under his breath. "Jane, don't come over here." He picked his way to the bookcase, and with a heave brought it upright again. Jane noticed how red in the face he became. He bent and picked up the nearest book, the corners of his mouth turned down at the crinkled edge of the paper and the bruised binding. Her dad really loved his books.

"Sorry, dad."

"It's alright. The house probably settled and pushed it the wrong way. That or we have a ghost." She watched from the doorway as he began to pick up more books, smoothing out the creases and putting them in their proper place. She went over and picked up strays that had fallen outside the circle of glass.

" _A Wrinkle in Time_ " she noted as she picked up the book. It had been her favorite novel for a long time. Space time was cool. She tossed it to him.

"I bet Joey Maynard hasn't read any of this," her dad held up their dictionary. Jane bent over with laughter so hard she started tearing up.

"Joey Maynard wouldn't know a dictionary if it hit him in the face," she said when she composed herself and began tossing more stray books his way.

"So he's…ludicrous?" She smiled as he began a game they played frequently.

"More like moronic," she shot back.

"Puerile."

"Rash"

"Dense"

She struggled to come up with another synonym, digging around in her brain for something impressive. She came up short and threw up her hands.

"Ugh! Stupid. He's stupid." Her dad chuckled, swiping the last book, ' _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ ', from the floor and sticking it on the bookcase.

"You and I are due for another crossword soon. Even Joey Maynard knows that word. Now get outta here, I gotta vacuum this up." He shooed her out of the room. She went and grabbed a banana from the kitchen and went to her bedroom, feeling lighter despite the entire situation. Her dad knew how to cheer her up. Later, he would tell her she had to go apologize to Joey tomorrow, and she would. Because she knew more words than him, and the look on his face when she outsmarted him would be better than seeing his black eye. Also her knuckles really hurt from all the punching.

But as she sat in her room chewing on her banana, her mood became uncertain as she suddenly realized something. The same red that she saw when the bookcase fell was the same red she saw when Joey had spit at her and called her a nerd no one wanted to talk to. She had felt such painful rage at the words that confirmed her deeply guarded fears. The red had crept into her sight like ivy from every angle, until it was all she saw. A second later she had felt the ground hit her nose and mulch fill her mouth. Her vision cleared as she lifted her head, and that was when she saw him dangling upside down by the shoelaces, crying like a baby and screaming. She hadn't done it…but she had. She absolutely knew it had been her, and she had no idea why.

But nobody needed to know that. It would only get her in more trouble anyway. She mentally shrugged, and turned to do the extra credit math homework.

* * *

It was gone.

He had put the orb where he usually put it, in the second drawer of his desk, enchanted to look like a battered ink well. It had been there this morning; when he didn't plan on trying to unravel its magic he checked it obsessively, paranoid that its sheer energy was attracting the mages and Odin himself. The last thing he needed was Odin realizing his debt to the Collector was still owed because of his son's slick fingers.

He tried to beat the panic into submission, feeling his magic respond to his alarm and attempting to tame the lick of it in his arms. He needed to concentrate and get it back.

He tore apart his room, the furniture flying to the ceiling upside down. It wasn't in there. He reset his furniture and slipped out of the room, trying to remember where he went during the course of the day. He slipped into a darker hallway and rested his palms against the walls. The ancient magic that intertwined with the stones of the castle itself echoed in his palms. His energy joined with it, and like extended arms, awareness of the entire castle settled on him. He could feel bodies moving through the hallways, could hear echoes of Odin talking to Frigga on a balcony, most likely about how to tame Thor's wild behavior at the taverns each night. What they didn't know was that Thor was in his bed like he should be. He just wasn't alone.

He retracted his magic away from the parts of the castle near his brother's room. Their mother would kill Thor if he had some bastard so young. He probed each section of the castle, feeling for any spike in energy, but he found none. He severed the connection and banged his fists once against the stone, cursing himself and his foolishness. If someone as remotely clever as him had picked up that orb, he was a dead man. Odin would punish him so severely for messing with that magnitude of magic he wouldn't see Vanaheim for a millennium.

But who would take it? He had told no one of the orb. He doubted anyone searched his room, but- and he hated himself for it- he had not yet mastered the spells that would alert him to an intruder in his room, and thus had no way of knowing if someone had searched that day. He was forced to make assumptions.

Thor wouldn't take it; he had no idea Loki even had it, and even if he did his pea brain wouldn't know what he was looking at. No. If Frigga or Odin had found it he would have heard about it by now. That left Thor's friends, and the servants. He dismissed the servants. They didn't dabble in magic. Thor's friends were distinct possibilities, and the only other avenue. He didn't talk to anyone else as frequently as they and his brother.

He slipped through the castle using circuitous routes, but it was unnecessary. The castle was on the brink of sleep, and evading the guards was child's play. He magicked himself from the great hall to the gardens, but it was the extent of his abilities. The effort left him paler and heaving, but he recovered well, and slipped into the streets of Asgard.

He spent the night quietly and methodically searching each room of Thor's friends, either by sneaking or through magic. Furniture was silently upended and set back in place, pockets were checked, and desks were searched from top to bottom while they snored. While checking Sif's he had been sorely tempted for a brief moment to dye her hair another color, but a sense of self-preservation won out.

After checking even in Volstagg's hairy beard, Loki was forced to admit that he had lost the orb. He managed to take himself back to the gardens before losing his temper. He swung his fists into the trunk of a massive tree whose branches hung low and enclosed him in a ring of greenery. The wood splintered and cracked beneath his knuckles and he relished the feeling. He could never keep anything; he could never just have something that was his. He was on the brink of understanding that orb, he knew it. But apparently fate had different ideas about what he should have. Why him? There was nothing his witless brother did _not_ have.

The anger left him as abruptly as it arrived. He wrenched his hands free of the tree, and was almost sorry for the deep indents he left in the wood. He turned his back and slid down to sit against the base of the trunk. Through his back he felt the life of the tree, humming steadily as its roots burrowed slowly through the dirt below. He closed his eyes and sighed.

He sat there until he detected faint yellow light through the low hanging branches of the tree. He emerged into the early morning, the purple of the night making way for the day.

He made it to his room in time to jump into bed as his servant arrived to help him wash and dress. After he had put on his attire for the day, he glanced at the desk across the room, feeling the itch to look crawl up his back. It wasn't there; he knew it, but something within him could not ignore the irrational desire. He crossed the room and opened the drawer.

The battered ink well sat there innocently, and utter shock rendered him frozen. He stood there for a while, until his eyebrows drew together in perplexity. He reached out to pick it up, and the illusion faded at his touch to reveal the orb, looking exactly as he had left it the previous morning. He examined it from every angle and rotated it, but could not see any signs of where it had been or what had happened to it. The gem remained inside it.

Shaking his head, he gave up on the mystery. But he did not put it back in the drawer. Instead he put it in the pocket of his trousers. The only way to know if it was the orb's actions was to carry it on his person.

After the incident he carried it in his pocket every day without fail. At nights he left it under his pillow. Nothing happened.


	2. Chapter 2

_November, 2000_

Jane was going to bash her head in if this teacher did not stop. The idiot droned on, philosophizing and preaching on the important of proper conjugation of French verbs, lest they all descend into an uncouth generation without morals or drives to learn anything other than crude English. She peeled her hand away from her cheek, and tried not to focus on the fact that graduation was two hundred and five days away.

Honestly, she didn't give a rat's ass about French. A good grade in French wasn't offering her full ride to Culver for an astrophysics degree a year early. Suppressing a long suffering sigh that extended back to when she had mistakenly signed up for this class for the language credit, she pushed her French book to the side. As surreptitiously as possible, she scooted her personal notebook in its place, trying to locate the last place she left off in her diagrams.

She had been trying to map constellations without looking at the official maps, to see if she was any good, as well as their celestial coordinates. So far, she had been spot on. Orion had been the easiest, and both the Big and Little Dipper had been child's play. But as she had moved on to others, she had had more trouble understanding the declination and how to determine right ascension on her own. Because right ascension was measured in minutes and hours, and that somehow lined up with longitude but she didn't know how because longitude was measured in minutes and seconds and her microscope at home was just not doing the job-

"Hey Foster," came the whisper.

Her head jerked up, realizing a second later that she probably looked like a very stupid fish caught on a hook. Mark, the class clown and arguably the most attractive person in the class, had just talked to her. Well, whispered at her. The teacher droned on.

She felt heat creep up her face; he was obviously waiting for a reply. She fumbled fo a response. Mark was really good looking, and he got B's, which was good for a guy who walked around thinking football was a religion and he was their redeemer. But her flattery became marred with confusion, and a vague sense of being mocked. Boys like Mark never talked to her.

"Um, hi", she whispered back, trying not to sound breathy and awkward _. Yeah like you could be anything else, Jane_ , she thought.

Smiling confidently through a row of perfectly straight teeth, Mark leaned into the space between them, keeping an eye on the teacher.

"Was wondering if you wanted to hang out this weekend, me and my buddies are going to the movies after the game. Maybe you could take that pretty face out of your nerd books. You might go cross eyed." He knocked fists with his buddy in front of him, a fellow football player whose name Jane couldn't recall. She didn't know most people's names in this school. The backhanded insult didn't escape her, but Mark said things without really thinking.

"Yeah, sure, sounds great!" She heard herself say, too loudly. The teacher cast a look their way, and as she and Mark were reprimanded for talking during her teacher's very important lesson, she felt a heavy anxiety mix with a delicate hope. Maybe she _should_ take her head out of her books.

* * *

"Loki, join the fun!"

Thor yelled from the practice field where he, Sif, Fandral, and Hogun were practicing swordsmanship. Loki barely looked up from his perch in the windowsill of his room on the second floor, flipping through a book on Dark Elf magic intently.

Thor's sword clashed with Sif's, ringing out sharply and making Loki's teeth grind. Must they insist on practicing the same weapon everyday for centuries? Did it not get tiresome? Thor's moves were entirely predictable, and as Loki glanced up from his text, identified Sif's swipe to the ribs a moment before she leapt to do it. It took Thor down, and after a good smack to the calves with the broad side of her sword, she relented.

"Brother," Thor staggered to his feet, his face ruddy, "come down and play. Sif has already knocked us to the ground twice."

Loki merely swung the leg he dangled off the edge of the balcony, squinting as he searched for anything that resembled the magic he was interested in. Nothing in his research had proven fruitful. The orb he had stolen from the collector a century ago had proven to be intensely fascinating. After weeks of straining the full extent of his magic, he had finally been able to overpower the metal shell's spells to reveal a small purple stone, which had glowed from within. It held immense power, that was certain, and Loki's own magical nature had spiked at its nearness, replacing his exhaustion with adrenaline. It had made him tremble with a terrible and powerful feeling that only increased as he reached for it.

It had thrown him so forcefully that he had to remove the indent his body had made in the wall with a spell he had to look up, because his normal spells had been inadequate. It had been immensely frustrating, and he had vowed to improve his magic and discover what exactly he had stolen from that Collector. He would conquer this unruly magic.

His brother's annoying voice resurfaced. "Come, Loki. Stop playing coy. Or are you too afraid that I'll best you in front of everyone for the thousandth time?"

He snapped his book shut. He should know better than to rise to this bait after six hundred years, he really should. He slid off the balcony, landing lightly in front of his brother and his friends. Thor grinned, knowing the look on his brother's face. He lifted his sword.

They circled each other, Loki pulling his dagger from his sheath. Thor scoffed at the weapon, "You think to beat me with that? Every time, brother, I beat you when you wield a regular broad sword."

"I think you'll find, brother, that my dagger will do well enough against a sword that can't beat Sif, even when she's sick and blind in one eye."

The reference to that incident did exactly as he intended. Thor rushed him, clumsy and ferocious. He dodged easily, letting Thor blow by him. He jumped back to dodge Thor's sword as he swung around to recover. They sparred, Loki's small dagger misdirecting Thor's thrusts by a fraction, but it was all he needed. A poorly aimed thrust at his shoulder was dodged, leaving Thor struggling to maintain balance. It was easy to magic himself directly behind his brother and pull mercilessly on that red cape he insisted on wearing at all hours of the day.

His back made contact with the ground. A heavy shudder rippled through the field. Loki kicked the fallen sword out of Thor's reach. Ten paces above Thor's face, small knives materialized out of the air, their daggers pointing directly downward. As if the strings of a catapult were suddenly cut, they sliced through the air towards Thor's face at breakneck speed. His eyes barely had time to bug out of his oafish face before they all froze, suspended a hairsbreadth from his eyes, cheeks, and forehead.

There was a moment of absolute silence, as everyone witnessed Loki's first victory in combat over Thor. Then, the daggers melted away into wisps of green smoke. There was another beat of silence, and Loki felt the satisfaction and pride slip onto his face. That was a recent trick he had learned, and it had taken much refining of his magic to finally conjure apparitions.

He expected Sif's right hook and Thor propelling himself off the ground straight into his midriff, both screaming about his lack of honor. What he didn't expect was the loud pop and the darkness that he was sucked into a moment later, as if a giant invisible hand kept pushing him backwards into nothing.

* * *

She ended up cancelling, and she hated herself for it. Mark had sounded genuinely put out, but Jane could not bring herself to stand amongst his friends and pretty girls who chased after him and cheer at a sport she didn't care about. Now, she sat in her dark room on Saturday night, comparing the charts she made to official ones by the light of her desk lamp, trying not to let tears fall.

Her dad had knocked softly an hour ago, asking if she needed anything, and she had sent him away with sharp words borne of her insecurity and self loathing. Why couldn't she have just gone? She would have had fun, made friends, created a social life for herself outside of movie nights with Darcy and her cat…

Anxiety bloomed like a poisonous flower in her chest.

Her lamp flickered. She turned it off, and then turned it on again, thinking it just needed a reset. It didn't turn back on. Typical. Damn lights hadn't worked correctly for ten years.

She sighed, and turned in her chair to go flip her overhead lights on. It turned on before she was halfway out of her chair. The switch was still down. A sudden feeling of all the air being sucked from the room invaded her body, stealing her breath from her lungs and raising the hairs on her arms. She glanced around the dark bedroom, adrenaline spiking as she froze halfway out of her seat.

There was a crack like lightening centered in the middle of her room that made her jump, and then a shimmering, distorted, vertical line appeared. The edges blurred her bed, and it was so subtle Jane would not have seen it if she hadn't felt all the energy in the room directed towards it.

She felt glued to her chair, eyes popping with curiosity and fear at the phenomenon. Her overhead lightbulb flared intensely, driving her eyes down to the floor. She heard a thump and a rustle, and another small crack before she could look up. The brightness faded. The vertical line was gone.

It took all Jane had not to scream. A very tall person was struggling to rise to their feet, low voice carrying the same tone people make when they curse. The back of their head sported pitch black hair that ran down to the nape of the neck. One pale hand grasped at her bed, using it to lift them upright in a space that just a moment ago had been unoccupied.

Jane struggled to find breath. The man was easily six feet tall, his long frame covered in what she supposed was leather. She couldn't see his face except for one feature. Sharp eyes met hers, flew around the room, and settled back on her. She was suddenly hyperaware of the six feet of space separating them.

"Where am I?" He spoke demandingly, and with a curious accent, leaning forward into the moonlight and raising a hand. A hand that was holding a knife.

The glint of the light off the dagger snapped her to her senses. She leapt out of her chair like a frightened rabbit, scrabbling at the desk behind her, ungluing her tongue from the roof of her mouth to scream for all she was worth. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. Her eyes bugged further as her hands clutched her throat. She couldn't speak, could hear nothing but the air rushing out of her throat uselessly, and her panic escalated to something out of her control. She was unused to aggression and hostility and in the face of danger her body shut down, but she felt the second of searing terror keenly before entering fight or flight mode. Red started to creep into the corners of her vision as her senses sharpened in anticipation.

"I said," the menacing figure took a step forward, his boots making no noise on her carpet. "Where am I, girl? Are you a girl? You look like a Midgardian, if your hideous attire is anything to go by."

His words rushed over, but were devoid of any meaning. All she could focus on was that knife still pointed at her, and how easily he could reach her before she could make it to the door.

She must have given away her intentions somehow, because she heard a small chuckle from the shadows, and the man took another step forward. His figure hit the moonlight from her window. Her terror spiked again at the sight of the angular face and sharp eyes, which were lit with curiosity and amusement, towering over her even from a short distance. His overwhelming presence nudged her over the tipping point of fear, into the wild instinct of an animal lashing at its predator. A red haze continued to creep across her eyes.

Her hands, which had been gripping her desk, lifted to wrap around the nearest objects out of desperation. She hurtled the one in her left. The man saw it coming, and stepped neatly to the side faster than should have been possible. Her pen hit the bed harmlessly and bounced onto the floor. He laughed. In the same breath he was in her space, towering over her and crowding her until her back bruised against the desk. The object in her right hand hit the desk with a worthless thud. She reflexively sucked in air to scream, forgetting it was useless.

"You are amusing," the man said, and she stilled as she felt the cold tip of his dagger brush under her chin. Up close she could see his teeth, arranged perfectly in a thin mouth stretched into a smirk. The red that was criss crossing her vision made them look bloody. Air wheezed out of her mouth.

"Now tell me exactly where I am, and don't think about screaming. I'll slit the man's throat." He jerked his head to the right, and it dawned on her that he was talking about her dad. He was threatening to kill him.

The room was abruptly cut off from her sight by a curtain of blood red. _Shit_. This hadn't happened in a year. Knowing what was coming, she struck her arms out to the side, blindly searching for a grip. Bile rose in her throat and her ears rang, the vision loss disrupting her orientation. She couldn't tell up from down or left from right. Dimly she heard a grunt of surprise, a sizzle, and a bang that broke the silence of the house. As quickly as the red took over it disappeared, like a shade rolling up a window. Her blood rushed in her ears as sight slowly returned to her. Scrabbling weakly at the desk behind her for purchase, she righted herself from where she had slumped over, surprised to find that the man was not towering over her anymore. She blinked one more time to clear her eyes, the panic and terror of a minute ago blending with the tiniest fraction of vindication.

The man had been thrown against the opposite wall, judging by the cracks Jane could see radiating out from an impact site. It hadn't been hard enough apparently, the man was already on his feet, staring at her with that same look of curiosity, but his amusement was long gone. A look she could only describe as wariness caused his eyes to flit over her form, but he made no attempt to go near her. Instead he raised his hands in a gesture she recognized as placating, and he made a show of sheathing his dagger. His face was a study in calm; she had no idea what she looked like, all heaving chest and wild eyes. For a moment there was silence, each regarding the other suspiciously across the darkened bedroom.

To her surprise, it was she who spoke first, not realizing that the pressure on her throat was gone until she heard her own voice.

"How the fuck did you get in here?"

He laughed quietly at her hoarse voice, the sound clear and full. The difference in mood jarred her, but the knowledge that she had some way to defend against him afforded her some courage. "I am definitely on Midgard. Your curses are so vulgar and poorly created. I'll applaud your fight though; the women of this realm are weak. Tell me girl, what magic have your people managed to finally master in this forsaken sewer to be able to throw me like you did?"

His tone was derisive, and she was sure he was catering to her fear for some reason, but she did not miss the honest curiosity in the way he leaned forward and regarded her. He was waiting for her to answer him. But his words made no sense to her. Midgard? Magic? Maybe he was crazy. No one talked like that either, so elegant and melodic. The thought that he was unstable doubled her hesitance, analyzing what was best to say to him. She opened her mouth, but found she had no idea what to say.

"Jane? You okay?" Her dad's sleepy voice at her door sent adrenaline skittering back into her veins. She dared not take her eyes off of the man across the room, and the corner of his mouth turned up as if he guessed her thoughts. He sat primly on the edge of her bed, one leg crossed over another. He smiled deviously and put one hand in the pocket of his pants.

"Perhaps another time," he said. Between one blink and the next he vanished, leaving a hint of curling green smoke that Jane watched dissipate into nothing.

"Jane?" Her dad's voice, more urgent this time, forced Jane to turn around, sluggish from shock. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as she turned her back to the room to let her dad in. He was dressed in his sleeping clothes, the bags under his eyes seeming to be ten times larger than they were normally. She stumbled backwards.

"What on earth was that noise?" Her dad blinked through sleep, seeming not to notice her state or that she wasn't anywhere near bed.

"Uh," Jane glanced over her shoulder into her dark room, but there was nothing there. "Just, you know, I rolled out of bed. Fell asleep studying." She hoped and prayed her dad would just accept her words and go back to bed. Her heart was racing and she felt like puking.

"Alright. Be careful. Night." He turned and mechanically made his way to his room. She stood in the doorway until she heard his door click, before forcing herself to calm down and spin on her heel.

He wasn't there. She turned her lights on, thankful that they still worked. No one. She stared hard at the spot he had been sitting not one minute ago, her heart racing and her head still reeling from vertigo.

* * *

He reappeared in his chambers, the false smirk on his face sliding away into a tight line. In his pocket, his hand clenched around the orb and he brought it up to examine it. It looked innocent enough, sitting there in his palm. The intricate silver workings appeared as dull as they always had. The last vestiges of magic buzzing in the air around it like a hundred insects gave a different impression. Loki glanced around uneasily, noting through the window that night had fallen. How long had he been away? To him it had felt brief, a matter of minutes between the time he had been sucked into the darkness and when he vanished from the little mortal girl's bedroom using the power of the orb. But it had been midday when he had left the palace's practice fields. Now it was almost the middle of the night, judging from the deep streaks of purple that shot across the sky.

Of all places to take him, why take him to Midgard? To some little girl's bedroom? Midgard was an unruly realm, if the discussions he overheard from ambassadors and warriors were accurate. Tales of their short life spans, barely lasting a century, the way they slaughtered each other for years on end, were laughed at over feasts, used as the worst example of civilization. The only beings they ranked above were the Jotuns. Thor frequently boasted that he would soon travel there and frighten the mortals into worshipping him. What would the orb want with Midgard?

It was puzzling and altogether compelling.

At a loss, he slipped the orb back into his pocket. He had long ago accepted that the orb was beyond his control, but it was unsettling to realize it could manipulate him, could transport him anywhere it pleased. Perhaps he shouldn't keep it on his person. He immediately rejected the idea; this object was too powerful and too interesting to not know where it went when it vanished. That was, after all, why it had been with that Collector. No, what he needed was to master the art of magic; perhaps then he could control some part of the stone.

The next morning, he devoted himself to the library. It was the last place Thor would bother him. He climbed the ladder to the tallest shelves, dusted off the oldest books he could find, flipping through thousands of yellow pages for something that resembled his orb. He could not find much; the magic in the orb must be either so dark or so ancient that no one knew or dared to write about it. He shoved his last attempt back onto the shelf hard enough that dust five thousand years old puffed into his face in retaliation. He cursed the historians that had failed to document the creation of a clearly powerful and complex object, with energy itself as its fundamental structure. He was in the greatest library in all the realms; if this object's history could not be found here, it was not anywhere.

At the end of the afternoon he stood on the ground, at the edge of the dark magic section that was long neglected and unused. An enormous leather bound book crammed in the corner of the section caught his eye, the spine layered in dust so thick he had to magic it away to properly read the title: " _The Sorceresses of Nornheim_ ". This was the very last book in the section that he had not torn though, having gone from top to bottom. He flipped it open, sure that whatever the text contained would not be useful. Resigning himself, he made his way to the desk where he had pulled the most promising books. He became so absorbed in the spells of Karnilla and her sisters that he did not sense her approach.

"Dear, what are you looking for?" His head snapped up from his book at his mother's voice, glancing at all the books on dark magic he had strewn around him and left carelessly open. He considered changing the text on the exposed pages with magic, but she would immediately know what he had done. She came up behind him, placing one warm hand on his shoulder as she bent to look at the text.

"Nornheim?" Her other hand came up to caress his hair idly. "You've been taught the history of Nornheim already."

"Yes, but they failed to mention how powerful the sorceresses that reside there are. I became curious when I saw they were mentioned in another book. Their magic is second only to father's. How do they change pure wood to pure metal?"

"I know much of their magic, Loki, but some aspects of power they dabble with are best left untouched. Too many things can go wrong when you fundamentally change the material of what an object is made of." Her fingers rubbed circles on his scalp, finding his only scar from childhood when he had narrowly missed being decapitated by an angry goblin.

"But surely they are powerful enough to undo any mistake that they conjure. Look at what they have already created!" He gestured to the massive textbook to his right, and pointed at the drawing. "They produced a sword that can never break or grow dull. They have created entire realms for a day, only to destroy them with a simple spell." He looked over his shoulder at her excitedly.

"How I wish to be able to do that."

His mother laughed lightly and removed her hands from his hair. "My dear, I do not think such power would suit you. You cause enough mischief with what I already teach you. Your brother was quite angry the other day when you disappeared so suddenly."

He struggled to display genuine remorse at the image of his brother slamming into the ground after he vanished, and her eyes narrowed in a motherly way at his failed attempt to placate her. "You must be studying very much; I have not yet taught you to teleport more than a couple paces."

He was old enough to know when his mother's tone meant she was searching for different answers than the ones she was asking of him. There had been many moments in his younger days when his mother had been able to infer which of Thor's bruises were his own fault or because of Loki's tricks. It was here that he must be the most careful, the most believable.

"I didn't think I would be able to do it either," he said honestly, meeting her eyes before turning around to close the books. Truth wrapped around a lie would be much more palatable for his shrewd mother to swallow, particularly a lie by omission. "I was as surprised as Thor."

"Where did you end up?" she asked.

"I have no idea," he replied, sending the books floating back to the shelf with a push of his hand. He made a note of where the book on Karnilla was located. "Some servant's quarters I think. It was more annoying than anything." He turned and looked her in the eye. He felt genuine guilt at lying to his mother; she was his best confidante and most ardent supporter of his sorcery when Odin and Thor scoffed. But unless he wanted his father sniffing out his hidden source of untamable and curious magic, he would simply have to.

The look on her face at his reply was hard to read, despite having known it his whole life. It seemed to hover somewhere between curiosity and suspicion. The moment seemed to hang in the air. Then she smiled, and it was over.

"Come," she put a hand on his back and led him out of the massive library. "It's time for your defense lessons. Perhaps we can persuade Master Tyr to let you choose the dagger as your weapon of choice at your coming of age ceremony."

Loki snorted with contempt. "He'd sooner dress like a dwarf, dance in a circle, and sing songs of his lust for horses in the market square than agree to the idea. He despises my dagger."

She burst out laughing next to him, struggling to compose herself when the guards they passed cast questionable looks at them. Loki paid them no mind; his mother's laughter, especially by his doing, filled him with a particular shade of joy that he could find in no other place or person. He turned to look at her, finding he did not have to look up quite so much to see her face as he once did. His slick grin earned him a tweak on his ear.

"Your mouth is dirtier than the sewers. Mind your tongue. And Master Tyr is rooted far too deep in the old ways to appreciate your mix of magic and weapon. I will help him see reason."

The authority in her voice let Loki know that she was not going to help Master Tyr see reason so much as make him accept it. But she would do it quietly, he knew, in the way that he appreciated. Loki wagered she achieved far more in one day with her cunning and charm than Odin did in a century with that scepter.

Together they walked through the halls to the practice fields, his mother on his arm, making idle conversation. When they arrived on the practice fields, Thor yelling at him to hurry, he bid his mother farewell and made his way to the practice circles. He lunged, dodged, and thrust with the sword Tyr forced him to use until he was sweaty and red in the face. Tyr criticized his form and ordered him to try again and again against his opponent no matter how well he did. Loki simply grit his teeth and bore it; it was a matter of pride. He would never be as accomplished as Thor at these larger weapons, but he refused to be an imbecile when wielding them.

When Master Tyr finally released him from his practice it was with relief that he unsheathed his dagger, and began throwing it with relish at the targets, summoning it back to him with simple magic. Confidence that he had lacked earlier at practice came to him now as each throw hit exactly where he intended. Though, he could not help but note bitterly, no one save his mother appreciated what he excelled at. Her words from earlier resurfaced, and he could not help but fiercely hope that he would be able to use his dagger during his ceremony in a few year's time. If he would not be as lauded and fawned over as Thor, he would at least not make a fool of himself in front of Asgard. A habit Thor could not seem to break, yet seemed to somehow endear him all the more to the people of the realm.

Loki continued to let his thoughts wander between Thor's idiocy and the duties he and his brother would soon assume as he threw his dagger at targets in the fading light of day, often magicking more replicas out of the air around him to send a deadly bunch of them all at once. They would have to attend all council meetings, not just a few. When wars, famine, or treason reached Asgard they would be expected to defend, support, and uphold it as the shining example of the nine Realms. To ride at the front of Asgard's massive army with his father and inspire them. He was ready for this; he knew this as surely as he knew his dagger would hit the target's left eye. Expectation, though a weight that grew heavier as the days until his coming of age ceremony became less and less, did not become an anchor that would drown him as he knew it would Thor, but a burden he would assume with purpose and pride. And despite all of Thor's shortcomings, Loki's love for him won out every time, because though Thor teased him for his magic, he never made it seem like a fault. Yes, he would advise his bullheaded older brother before and after he assumed the throne, despite how unworthy Loki knew him to be to hold such a position. This had always been Loki's role in the royal family.

He threw daggers until he couldn't see the targets through the night, his serious thoughts consuming him until his mother summoned him for their nightly sit by the fire. Later, in the darkness of his chambers, he idly traced the patterns swirled in the metal of the orb's surface, fascinated to see it pulse purple light out at random intervals. While he was asleep, he missed the sharp crack that lasted less than a second, a vertical distortion appearing in the middle of the room, that blipped out of existence as quickly as it had appeared. It left nothing but a sharp burst of frigid air that swirled out of Loki's window into the mellow Asgardian night.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: This chapter wrestled with me but I believe that I emerged victorious. Reviews always welcome; I aim to always improve. Thank you, I hope you enjoy.

 _January, 2001_

"Jane Foster."

"…. Jane Foster!"

"Here!"

Out of breath and hands full, she heard her name called just as she pushed into the lecture hall, the door slamming shut behind her with an echoing bang. The professor, a portly man with a receding gray hair line and a general air of having a perpetual temper, eyed her from above the rim of his seventies style glasses silently before moving down the list. A few bored kids in the back turned to give her half hearted sneers, but for the most part no one took any notice of Jane as she made her way to the very first row, one hand clutching the bag hanging off of one shoulder and the other awkwardly balancing folders, a notebook, and a thermos of coffee. She carefully laid out her items on her desk, shoving her galaxy themed L.L Bean bag Erik had gotten her behind her legs and taking up a pen with excitement.

Erik had referred her; the professor would never have allowed a high school student to enroll in his class, university permission be damned. But when Erik Selvig, her father's colleague at Culver, had displayed Jane's grades, a stern eyeball, and the fact that she was graduating a year early, the crotchety man had grunted his assent. Jane loved Erik to death, had done so since she was a little girl and he brought her posters of galaxies and ice cream, but it irked her greatly that she had needed him to display the hard work _she_ had done over the years in order for this professor to accept her. One day her credentials would be enough.

But whether or not this man was a douche bag, Jane thought with the same determination that drove her in everything else, he was the leading astrophysicist professor in the area. His students hated him, but they raved about what he taught. That was what Jane was here for; she wasn't receiving any credit for the class she was enrolled in concurrently with her high school courses anyway, so she might as well learn it all. It was with this determination to learn, and excitement at the diagrams already displayed on the professor's board, that she tapped her pen energetically against her pad of paper.

After the class had ended, and the professor slammed them with a paper due in a week on Coulomb's Law and a discussion on the variables involved in the equation, Jane emerged giddy and empowered, high on the college classroom experience and the knowledge she was being exposed to. She formed rough ideas for her essay as she made her way to her car and drove home in the late afternoon.

She was on the phone ordering a pizza for dinner, as per her dad's instructions he left on the counter, when she walked into her bedroom and nearly fainted.

The man was sitting there again. The tall, scary, pale man with black hair and a smile that had raised the hairs on her arms was sitting on the edge of her bed. This time he let her scream. The phone dropped with a thud onto the carpet as she stood rooted to the spot, the memories she had worked so hard to suppress and shove to the back of her mind resurfacing too fast for her to control the panic. Red started to creep into the corners of her vision and she nearly wept with relief at the familiar sickly feeling. It was her only protection.

"Wait!" The man stood, holding up his hands in a universal gesture of goodwill. All she remembered was his painful grip in the darkness as he laughed at her feeble attempt to injure him. Her body jolted a step backwards, and her back met the hallway across from her doorway.

"Don't," she strangled, the red haze seeping like mist into her vision and blurring his shape to a green and black shimmer. "Don't come near me."

"I will not. I won't hurt you. I swear it." Again, he held his hands up, palms toward her. Jane did not believe him for a second, remembering his slick voice from before as he threatened to kill her father. She spared a second to feel relieved he was not here, even though she was terrified. The red stopped its advance, hovering over her final tunnel of sight.

Her heart was beating too loudly, his words filtering through the rush in her ears.

"I-"

She gasped for air, one hand clutching her chest as she bent over to cough violently, trying to relieve the constant band of tightness around her chest that always accompanied the red. The man's head tilted, and an expression of intrigue crossed his face. "Do you know how to control that?"

She didn't; she had never understood why this had been happening to her, but she wasn't about to tell him that. Though she figured it was obvious enough by the way she was hyperventilating. Tears swam in her eyes as she struggled for control of her body. She felt herself slide down the wall into a crouch, and put her sweaty palms on her knees. The dizziness in her head begged her to close her eyes but she didn't dare take her eyes away from the man who was now openly staring with an unreadable expression. Her cell phone was too far away to reach. She hovered painfully on the edge between control and the wildness of the red power, waiting for the final push.

"Do you need help?" He lowered himself down to her level, remaining across the room. Her eyes met his, and through her narrow vision she could see that though he was impossibly tall, his face was young. Again, he showed her his empty hands, gesturing forward, his face transforming into something more open as she heaved and stared at him with wide eyes.

"Don't come near me," she managed to gasp. Minutes that seemed like years passed, the red sheen finally beginning to recede as he made it clear he wasn't going to move from his crouch across from her.

"You have my word. As I said, I won't hurt you. Though I understand why you don't believe me. Please forgive my first impression; I'm usually quite polite when meeting a lady." The side of his mouth quirked up, his eyes lighting with disarming humour. Jane found herself distracted by how it completely changed his face, softening the intense eyes and malicious tone that had been haunting her for two months.

Her breathing began to even, the pounding in her head and the roar in her ears receding the longer she let herself observe him in the afternoon light. He was dressed in an outfit made of leather and some fine green material Jane didn't know. Gold embroidery made the green color of his shirt all the more vivid. The leather of his pants was obviously high quality, and clung to the man's legs without being restrictive. His boots were sturdy and black. Her eyes flew up to his face once more, where his smirk had vanished. Now his startlingly green eyes met hers impassively, waiting for her, it seemed, to finish her assessment. She continued upward, over the regal nose and smooth forehead to where his jet black hair smoothed away over his skull, before drifting down again to his angular face.

She felt calmer. The red was receding now, taking her symptoms away with it. The sweat in the creases of her palms was cold and clammy, and she rubbed them on the knees of her jeans, letting out a gust of air when the tightness in her chest faded to nothing. His eyebrows rose, and sharp eyes darted over her body before returning to hers.

"Are you well?"

"Um," she coughed to clear the crack in her voice and tried again. "Yes. I'm fine."

He nodded, and they both regarded each other from across the space. Jane could hear the whir of the dryer at the other end of the house.

"Forgive me. I acted poorly when we first met. I was taken off guard by where I was transported. I am Loki, Prince of Asgard." His chin rose as he spoke, and despite how drained she felt, Jane almost laughed.

"Is that supposed to mean something?" The look of shock on his face actually did coax a nearly hysterical laugh from her. Memories of their last encounter came to the forefront of her mind, terms he used like' Midgard' and 'mortal' , that made her think he wasn't sane. Then again, she was the one who thought she saw him literally appear out of nowhere. Her hands balled into fists as she struggled to come to terms with whatever the hell was happening. "Why do you keep showing up in my room, anyway? That's…weird, honestly."

He tried and failed to gracefully rearrange his face into a less shocked expression. "Do they not speak of Asgard here?"

"Here?"

"This is Midgard, is it not?"

The stare she gave him seemed to frustrate him. Running a hand through his hair, he mumbled under his breath, sounds she didn't understand issued in one long stream of breath that she couldn't keep up with, until she heard a familiar term.

"Yes, we're on Earth," she said slowly and apprehensively. His eyes shot up, lighting with satisfaction.

"So that's what you mortals call this realm. I knew there was another term for it I had read somewhere." His triumphant looked faded as he took in her poorly concealed wariness. A small smile appeared and he shook his head. "You think me ill in the head. Or a liar."

Jane found herself unable to respond. On autopilot, her brain began to lay out the facts, a way of making sense of everything that seemed completely unexplainable. He _had_ appeared out of nowhere in her bedroom last time, and there were no signs of the house having been broken into today. He spoke a language that sounded like nothing she had ever heard before. His attire was something out of the Renaissance. She had seen him disappear with a crack and a wisp of green smoke last time. These truths by no means made his story valid, but they did make him sound less crazy.

"I don't know what to think. But I don't believe you." She spoke frankly, less timid of him when he was level with her on the floor. There was also the relief that he had made no move towards her, instead accepting his position. Now he sat cross-legged, back straight and tall against her bed. Wincing at the cramps in her legs, she slowly stretched them out, her shoes extending into the bedroom, and crossed her arms. He obviously wasn't going to leave.

"Fair enough. A fool would take a stranger at their word without proof." She blinked at his candor, and the way he accepted her skepticism with grace. She crossed one foot over the other, feeling unexpectedly sheepish.

"It seems," he continued, his mouth sliding into a charming grin that simultaneously ensnared and unsettled her, "I shall have to prove it."

Before she could feel alarm at the suggestion his words held, he made a series of complex hand movements. His eyes slid past her to focus on a point to the left. Amazingly, unbelievingly, Jane watched a green glow emanate from his pale fingertips, tiny tendrils flowing around his hands and interconnecting into a geometric network. Then the emerald tendrils solidified, hardening into a structure. The green faded, and in his hands sat a symmetrical, gold construction, with more planes than she could count. He glanced up, suppressing a grin at the massive gape Jane knew she had on display. He set the plexus object on the ground and pushed his hand, sending it flying across the floor soundlessly. It came to a stop two inches from her shoes, hovering a hairsbreadth from the floor. Dumbfounded, she stared at it in silent wonder for a minute. Abruptly she snapped her jaw shut and looked up at him almost angrily.

"How are you doing this?" she demanded, forgetting all of her previous apprehension to get on her hands and knees and press her cheek to the floor next to the floating structure. There was no possible way to explain why it was floating. Feeling stupid, but unwilling to disregard any possible variable, she waved her hands above and around it, feeling for an invisible string that would make the whole thing laughable. She found nothing. She fearlessly poked it, and noted with pleasure that it moved in accordance with the laws of physics, yet remained hovering.

"Magic."

"Excuse me?" She whipped her face up from the floor at the delayed response. He hadn't moved from his spot against her bed, except to draw one long leg up from the floor to rest one elbow on. He raised one eyebrow, sporting a look of condescension that both suited his face and annoyed her.

"You asked how I created that. I used magic."

Jane immediately shook her head. "Magic doesn't exist."

"You just witnessed magic with your own eyes. It must exist." His tone was exasperated, his explanation slow as if he were speaking to a child. A fiery urge to slap him welled up within her unexpectedly, expressing itself in a blush that she felt stain her cheeks.

"That doesn't mean-"

"Jane! Where's the pizza?"

Her entire body lurched in surprise, adrenaline rocketing through her as the front door slammed. She cursed reflexively and whipped her head to stare down the hallway, halfway standing up. Keys jangled familiarly as they were dropped onto the dinner table. Shit. What was she going to do? Her dad would either kill her, kill him, or die of a heart attack if he walked in. For some reason she couldn't fathom, she knew without doubt she could not involve anyone else in her tall, dark, handsome problem that kept appearing in her room.

"It seems I shall have to continue to prove it to you some other time." The closeness of his voice made her turn to see him standing halfway across the room, one hand in his pocket. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Lady…?"

"Oh. Um. Jane. It's Jane." She whispered hastily, fretting at the sound of her father's footsteps approaching. With a playful smile and a glint in his eyes she could only label as mischievous, he bowed his head to her.

"It was lovely to meet you, Lady Jane. Perhaps next time we meet there will be less screaming," he murmured, gazing up at her with an amusement that embarrassed her. It was her last image of him as the same crack from before echoed, and he vanished in a wisp of that emerald smoke. His framework creation continued to float on the floor.

She straightened as the floorboards creaked and her dad rounded the corner. "Hey kiddo, where's dinner? Did you see my note?"

"Oh," she leaned against her doorframe as casually as possible, hoping he wouldn't come down the hall. "I ordered it. They haven't come yet? I fell asleep like right after calling. I'll call again."

"Alright. Could you do it soon? I'm starving. How was your first college class?"

Her eyes brightened at his question, and she used her elation on her physics course to distract her from the thought of the young man with the smug face and magical tricks.

* * *

He drew in a steady breath, and pulled back the string of the bow from his position behind the tree. His fingers brushed his cheek, stilling by his ear. He kept both eyes open, trained on the animal fifty paces away. Aiming, he let the ambient noises of the forest fade away, until only his heartbeat filled his ears. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Thump. He let it fly. Thump.

His aim was true; the animal fell with a bleat of surprise, the arrow embedded between its ribs. He strode quickly across the field, unsheathing his dagger and crouching down to end the creature's suffering. He was pleased with his prize; this hjort was rare in the parts of the forest the Aesir and Vanir hunted. It made for a highly coveted meal. He began to gut and skin the animal with ease, the routine of hundreds of years allowing his mind freedom to make sense of his harried thoughts. This was his refuge, the forest at the base of the great mountains. The summer air was sharpened by the crisp wind currents, the water cleaner, and the animals more wily and dangerous. Few desired to hunt here, and even fewer took this route when travelling past the mountains.

He had not had much time to come here lately; his training picking up in intensity as his coming of age ceremony neared. As a younger boy he would spend weeks at a time here, perfecting his tracking and survival skills while Thor and his friends ran after the older warriors and snuck into dangerous realms without Odin's permission. He had missed the skill of the hunt, the hard labor of cleaning and skinning the animal himself. In the middle of the field under the high sun, he leaned back on his heels and swiped his sleeve against the sweat that had built on his brow, and let his body get lost in the work. But he could not calm the maelstrom within his mind.

Twice now, the orb had brought him to that mortal girl on Midgard. Lady Jane, as she had informed him, with no small degree of amusing vexation. He spared a thought for her, the scared girl with forgettable features and an entertaining spirit. She truly was a spectacle of emotion, everything from terror to wonder to embarrassment crossing her face in such a short amount of time. His lips quirked at her reaction to his magic, wonder and skepticism all wrapped up in an interesting combination unlike any other reaction he had gotten. But it was not the girl that consumed his thoughts.

He wiped the blade of his dagger in the grass and sheathed it. He began to bag the carcass of the animal. Loki did not believe in coincidence; there was a reason the orb had brought him to the same location twice. He had yet to discover what that reason was. No matter how he analyzed the events, no matter what he recalled of the girl and her bedroom, he could not glean anything except for one puzzling connection. That mortal girl was harnessing magic. Twice now he had seen some unknown force take over her eyes; something red and powerful. When energy had blasted from her fingertips his defensive spells had been in vain; the force of the magic had thrown him back against the wall mercilessly. He had seen the same thing in her eyes during their second encounter, and once he was sure that she had maintained enough control over it, it had been intensely fascinating to watch. It was obvious that she had no idea what she had become host to by her panic and fear towards her own body; Loki knew it was magic, and powerful at that. It was the only current explanation for why the orb wanted to be there. He was just fortunate that he had mastered enough magic to transport himself back to Asgard using his secret portals as well.

Out of habit and a near constant compulsion he took out the orb, fingers running over the intricate work inlaid on the surface. A wave of relief swept through him at the contact, his own magical core humming with content.

There was a massive creak, so loud that Loki at first mistook it for thunder. The mistake nearly cost him. He looked to the left just in time to see a massive, uprooted tree barreling towards him. He hit the ground, the entire tree sailing over his head to roll and crash into a standing tree on the opposite end of the field with an ear splitting crack that rattled his teeth.

There was silence.

Loki dared not lift his head to look at the attacker, instead jamming the orb into his pocket and hastily murmuring the spell that would cloak him in invisibility. When he felt the spell settle on him, he rolled into a crouch in the long grass and unsheathed his knife, eyes raking the ring of trees. His bag with his catch in it sat two paces to his left, as did clear imprints of his boots and body, but he knew that he could not move without certainly giving away his position. He refused to tremble.

" _I know you are there, boy. Your seidr shines as bright as a star_." The harsh voice carried on the wind to where he crouched in the grass. Loki felt the magical power before he saw it. A hooded figure in a dark cloak that was too heavy for the heat strode out from the trees to the edge of the field, pausing at the edge. Loki's magic spiked at the nearness of a much more powerful sorcerer, potential energy coursing like adrenaline through his arteries and into his fingers. In his pocket, the orb responded, sending out gigantic bursts of energy and buzzing. He could do nothing, clenching his jaw as it sent out magic like a beacon.

The hooded figure laughed, soft and sinister.

" _Give it to me, little sorcerer. You know not the magnitude of the power you play with_."

Loki paled underneath his spell. The figure raised its arms and threw back its hood. The distance was nothing to Loki. He clearly saw the pale blue face, the dark stripes that ran up each cheek to converge at the bridge of the nose and continue up, the long dark hair knotted in a braid.

He also saw the merciless black eyes that pinned him to his spot.

A wild dread filled him, the kind that fills prey in its final moments. He broke the eye contact and lunged to the right, narrowly missing a crackle of energy and landing on his hands and knees in the grass. He scrambled upright to peer through the brush, conscious of the bent and broken grass next to him. The sorcerer's eyes had followed him, even though Loki could feel his invisibility spell intact. The alien face grinned, arms outstretched from where the magic had originated. It pointed a finger at him.

" _Give it to me, and you may live_."

Loki's heart pounded in his ears; every fiber of his being at war with himself. If he relinquished the orb he would live. If he did not… He put a hand over the bulge in his pocket, painfully aware of the precious time that passed and the sorcerer's penetrating gaze. Was he ready to die for this? This blasted thing that never obeyed him?p/

He hated to discover that he was.

Rage swept through him, brutal and powerful, which urged him to his feet and expelled any trace of fear. How dare this filthy creature try to take what was his? He would never allow it, not till he was in Hel. His spell dropped from him like a cloak, and he stood firmly in the middle of the field, his magical energy whipping up inside him like a sandstorm.

Across from him the thief smiled. " _So be it, little Prince. I will have what I came for, and your head will fetch a pretty price_."

A blast of magic shot from his hand.

But Loki heard none of it, the world around him to a ringing silence. Time slowed. His vision blurred. Terror seized him. Then a rage he had never known before filled him, and he felt a foreign presence. The entity entered him as if he had jumped into a lake, suddenly surrounding and invading from all sides. He was powerless to resist; a drunk with a bottle. It seeped through his pores, running through his veins and into his heart, his head, his stomach. Violent energy filled the spaces in his body until there was no room, until he felt close to bursting, and still it came, wave after wave. He struggled to find himself, struggled to latch onto both his terror and his bravery and failing. He felt when it wrapped around his seidr, pulling and twisting, remolding and reshaping, until it was intertwined with his very being. The sheer magnitude of it nearly knocked him backwards, choking the air out of his lungs.

Its depths went on forever.

He could do anything, _be_ anything; he was limitless.

The enemy's blast came into razor sharp focus, hurtling towards him at the pace of a snail. He almost laughed. His arms came up of their own accord, in a way he had done a thousand times. But this was different. Confidence and power sang through him. He felt his magic radiating from his core; with it, he felt the bright, endless, power. A part of the endless energy was wrapped around his, pulsing and vibrant; it hurtled through his body and out of his hands violently. He was almost loathe to share it.

Purple met black.

The force of the explosion sent Loki flying backwards, an ugly brown filling his vision before he realized he was face down in the dirt. But he felt no pain; he only felt a dark euphoria rising with him that pushed him to his feet once more, spinning around to take on the attacker with something akin to glee.

The enemy had fallen, blown back by the blast into a tree. It had cracked under the stress, rent in two at the middle of the trunk with a crack like lightening. An echo of a shocked expression was gone from the harsh face in a moment, twisting into hatred and malice. He gestured violently, and countless orbs of blue flames appeared all around him, suspended for a moment before propelling themselves forward at breakneck speed towards Loki.

He ran towards them. The new magic coursing through him gave him heightened senses, showed him clear lines of trajectory. It was easy to duck and twist around the flames, the colors flaring vivdly. They shot past him with a sizzle. He was closer now, running faster than he ever had in his life, an idea forming in a split second when he could find his own mind in the chaos. It was amazing, it was stupid, he was going to die. He grinned at the new hint of fear he saw in the sorcerer's eyes.

He was ten paces away now, and the creature's arms came up, sending a desperate burst of black magic at him. His plan solidified. He ran two more steps then he tucked, letting the black energy fly over his head as he somersaulted into the long grass.

He sprang up, dagger drawn. The wizard roared in fury, drawing his blade just in time to deflect the blow and send him flying backwards into the field.

A dagger buried itself to the hilt in the enemy's back.

The power left him as swiftly as it had arrived.

Loki's apparition vanished as it hit the ground. The monster screamed in pain, his arm swinging around and catching the real Loki across the chest, sending him sprawling and gasping for air. He rose to his full height in front of Loki, his cloak falling open around him to expose a muscular blue torso slashed with grotesque scars. His face was an ugly, seething contortion of flesh that showed no mercy. Blade in hand, he approached Loki, who was struggling to remember how to breathe and reeling from the loss of magic. His head spun and his vision grew fuzzy as a shadow fell over him.

" _Only fools defy me. I will have what I came for. Now I will make you suffer-"_

A loud caw pierced the air, immediately echoed by another. In unison, they both looked skywards and Loki almost shook with relief at the sight of Hugin and Munin, circling overhead. Odin was not far.

The sorcerer snarled, eyes darting to the trees before landing on Loki.

" _I will have it soon enough, little prince. You cannot protect such ancient power. And when another comes to claim it, I will let them kill you first."_

He turned, Loki's dagger protruding from his back, and vanished silently. Not a second later, Thor crashed into the clearing, bringing down four trees as he ran to Loki.

"Loki, what happened? Look at you! Are you wounded? Heimdall said he could not see you." He offered a hand to Loki, who grasped it and stood on shaky legs, his vision swimming. A keen sense of loss swept over him, and he had to still his hand from reaching for the orb, which now burned in his pocket.

"I-"

The sound of trotting approached, and Odin entered the clearing on Sleipnir, his company behind him. Loki steadied himself, forcing his breathing to even out. His vision improved. Nausea that had gripped him upon stabbing the sorcerer eased. His mind was still uneasy; it felt incomplete, stretched too far and rearranged in the wrong order. p/

"Why could Heimdall not see you?" He gripped Gungnir tightly. Loki forced his mind to start functioning again, flipping through the possible lies. If Heimdall could not see him while under the orb's influence could he see it at all? The realization that Heimdall most likely could not made his story all the more easy to spin. The orb was setting his thigh on fire.

"Powerful magic has been here." Odin took in the clearing, eyeing the splintered tree that Loki had thrown the sorcerer at.

"I don't know, Father. I was hunting when the sorcerer attacked me." He did not need to fake his breathlessness. Odin took him in with one eye, no doubt noticing his lack of wounds.

"I was too quick for him. Mother recently taught me how to transport. It probably saved my life. When he saw your birds he took off." He wisely fell silent, letting his story sink in. He banked on Odin becoming more fixated on the foreign presence entering his realm, and he was right. Odin turned his steed sharply, putting Loki on his blind side.

"Start scouting along the borders; take your best warriors," he said to Master Tyr, who was fixing a look of distaste at the younger prince. "I will speak to the mages. No one has slipped Heimdall's watch before. I will find out who did." Without a parting word he dug his heels into Sleipnir and rode off towards the astronomy towers, his company going off in different directions to do his bidding. Above, Odin's ravens ceased their circling to fly away. Loki was left in the field with Thor, who clapped him on the shoulder.

"I am glad you are unharmed, brother. Else I would have had to track down whatever ilk attacked you."

Loki gazed at Thor's sincere face, unable to quell the real affection he felt for his older brother. Like their mother, Thor's love for him was undeniable and unadulterated, and he found it hard to pretend that his true feelings for the fool were anything less than the same in the face of it. Hard, but not impossible. He adopted a haughty look despite how ill he knew he must look.

"The day you defeat a sorcerer with your bare hands is the day I will eat my dagger."

Thor laughed. "Challenge accepted. Where is your dagger?"

The thought of his dagger, embedded in the back of that creature in some sewer of a realm, ruined his mood further. "That damned thief made off with it."

"No matter," Thor said cheerfully. "That one was getting old. Perhaps you shall receive a better one soon, though you did not hear that from me."

Excellent; it would make a perfect gift when he passed his tests. His coming of age ceremony could not come soon enough as it was. He knew Thor was close to bursting with impatience as well. It was common knowledge he would be charged with Mjolnir. Then he would be flying everywhere, like an annoying insect, and the women would all swoon for him even more; it would be a thoroughly irritating affair the first couple of seasons.

He went and picked up his forgotten bag of meat, glad that it had not been trampled on. Together he and Thor made their way on foot back to the palace, talking idly. Loki was glad for it; his hands still shook slightly and he could not shake a vague emptiness in him he could not name or place. Above that was a humble sense of awe at the magnitude of power housed in that tiny stone, and the indescribable feeling that came with having it in him. He could not understand why it had finally interacted with him, but he was grateful. There was no question he would have been dead. He placed a hand over his pocket, feeling more protective of it than ever. He let Thor lead the conversation, lost in his own thoughts regarding the orb and Heimdall.

At the castle, he proudly showed off his catch to his mother, who kissed his cheek with delight and sent him straight to the cooks. That evening they all dined on Loki's catch, Thor eating with gusto, and his mother commenting that she was glad that he had come back alive and with such a delicious meal. She looked at Odin across the table expectantly. He had cleared his throat and agreed with a nod and a curt "of course", and gone back to his usual habit of silent dining.

It was the most Loki could have hoped for. But still, even with all of his mother's praise and Thor's wolfish eating, he felt something missing.

* * *

At ten o'clock on a Friday evening, Jane was lounging comfortably on her couch, watching 'Friends' with Darcy when it hit her. There was no trigger, no sign. One minute she was asking how Jennifer Aniston got her hair to sit so straight and the next she was doubled over, popcorn spilling across the floor as the red filled her vision and vomit rose into her throat.

Memory alone allowed her to reach the bathroom in time, retching violently over and over, emptying the contents of her stomach into the toilet. When there was nothing left she dry heaved, cold and hot flashes making her clammy and sweaty. She could see nothing, could her almost nothing due to the ringing in her ears. She felt hands gather her hair back, a concerned voice that didn't make sense. Her heart was thumping unevenly.

Pain split her head open and she screamed.

'


	4. Chapter 4

_February, 2000_

He blinked into Midgard, the flash of green that accompanied him dulled by the late sun. He came of his own accord this time, using a portal and his own energy to transport into the girl's room. The orb had been disappointingly silent ever since the encounter with the strange mage. His own impatience had gotten the best of him, and he had very furtively crept away to investigate, taking pains to avoid Odin's watchmen at the borders of the kingdom. His own magic had been rebuffed every time he attempted to reach for the orb, and out of a growing sense of frustration and barely contained desperation he had come to the only place he might find any answers.

But the room was empty, the dust suspended in the sunbeams that slanted through the windows. In a glance he gathered that the girl- Lady Jane- had not been there for a while. The bed, though rumpled, was stiff to the touch, her clothing on the floor devoid of the flowery scent she emitted; the door to her room creaked loudly from disuse when he opened it to banish the stale air. There was no one in the house.

Loki was puzzled. The girl lived her, did she not? She must come here often; but she had obviously not slept here in quite some time. His irritation increased. He strode over to her desk, fingers skimming over the thick books covered in a young layer of dust. Not very long away, then. His hands brushed over the other objects scattered about. A small smile curled the corner of his mouth as his hand ghosted over the writing implement she had thrown at him during their first encounter. He briefly became distracted by the numerous star charts spread out, overlapping and wrinkled at the corners. Loki only guessed they were start charts; the numbers and words that were scrawled in odd spots foreign and messy to him. The shapes on the chart eluded him, but the charts were similar to those he had pored over as a child. His night sky was vastly different. All that remained on the desk was a cup full of more of those odd Midgardian writing tools and a box of dull jewelry.

Driven more by curiosity more than a sense of purpose he began to open the drawers of the desk. He could not get answers without the girl, and he was loathe to return to Thor and Fandral in any case.

Reams of a strange material filled many of the drawers. Things he could not describe and had no name for filled others. A faint buzz began somewhere in the back of thoughts. In one drawer he found a leather-bound journal. He opened it by the gold strip tucked into the pages, and it fell open to reveal half a page full of the same messy scrawl that was on the star charts. The girl's journal. He had no internal debate on the ethics of reading it. His only regret was that he could not read her language. It would have been interesting to see her mind on these pages. He snapped the journal closed and put it back the way he found it.

He bent down to pull open a drawer at the bottom. Abruptly the buzzing at the back of his consciousness morphed into a clear hum that called to his seidr. Excitement made his hands clumsy and his breathing quick as he yanked the drawer open.

In the drawer was a black rock, jagged and glittering. The feeling of a foreign magical presence made his heart throb painfully, the orb in his pocket warming suddenly. Hesitantly he reached in and picked up the object. Outwardly there was nothing particularly interesting about it, but Loki could clearly feel the magical energy, pulsating out in waves like a star's heat. It was residual, an echo of what used to be. The echo was strong enough; Loki could very well imagine the amount of energy needed to create that lasting of an imprint. The orb's warmth spread from his pocket to his thigh.

So this was the origin of the magic the mortal was hosting. But where had it come from? How had it transferred to the girl? Was it as powerful as his orb? His hands ran over the uneven surfaces of the rock as if the answers to his questions would come leaping out of it.

His only certainty was that the girl was too weak to maintain the power in her body; it would have to be expelled eventually. His concern for the girl was forgotten by an intoxicating thought: possessing two objects of immense power.

His fingers clenched around the rock, adrenaline spiking. An idea formed. Before his thoughts could run away with his control he picked up the sound of a door opening. Cursing, he reluctantly placed the rock back into the drawer and made himself invisible. The door to the room opened to reveal a petite girl with mousy brown hair, dressed in bright clothes and straining under the weight of many books. Grumbling, she crossed the room and dumped the texts onto the bed.

"You take way too many AP's, Jane."

Abruptly she spun on her heel and made her way to the desk, the hem of Loki's coat barely brushing her knees as he sidestepped her. The girl slapped a piece of paper on the desk, grabbed a few items from its surface, and left the room; Loki was forced to twist out of her way again in the narrow space.

He tried to read the paper she had left and failed, his irritation at himself solidifying into a resolve to learn the proper spell to translate. He retrieved the black rock again, tucking it away into his pocket of space. He was confident the girl would not miss it. He would simply have to replace it by the time she returned. His conscience also reminded him to check on the girl's well being; he could not pretend he did not know the danger the mortal was in.

With those thoughts in mind, he returned to Asgard, the palace behind him growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

* * *

"Jane, dear!"

She jerked from her doze, the IV in her wrist tugging at her skin uncomfortably. Disoriented, and with the throbbing promise of a headache beginning in her temple, Jane bit back a groan as blurry shapes came into focus.

Her mother stood in the door to her hospital room, a too bright smile plastered on her face, her dark hair pulled back into a neat bun. Her heels clicked against the floor as she moved to Jane's bedside and sat gracefully in the squeaky plastic chair her father had been occupying when she drifted off. She was going to kill him.

"Mom! Hey," she said, in what was hopefully a passably pleased tone. She repressed the urge to smooth her rumpled hair and gown. Her mother's sharp gaze swept over her and around the room, regarding the dry erase board hanging on the wall displaying the nurse information.

"Where's…dad?" she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral. How dare he leave her alone? He hadn't even given her any warning, just scurried away like a coward in the dangerous quiet that settled before the storm that was her mother arrived.

Her mother's eyes finally tore themselves away from the range of smiley faces indicating levels of pain to look at her. Her lips pursed into a papery smile. "Your father decided you and I should spend some time catching up. It has been over a year, Jane." _I'm not here because I wanted to be_.

"So, you heard about what happened?" _And you still didn't want to be here? It's been three weeks_.

"Of course. Your father called me that night. I happened to be at a weeklong networking conference for the University in Glasgow at the time." _I was too busy to care_.

Jane bit back the sharp retort that was attempting to leap out of her mouth Her mother's words had always been carefully constructed to convey how important her own research was in London, and how everything, no matter how brightly she smiled, was secondary. There was a moment of silence.

"The results were inconclusive?"

"Yes," Jane replied heavily, sitting back against her pillows. "They've done every scan under the sun. It's not cardiac, pulmonary, hormonal or anything else. There's no tumors, no abnormal growths, nothing. So they're letting me leave tomorrow."

"Hm." The corner's of her mother's mouth turned downwards, eyebrows coming together and lips compressing slightly into a face Jane recognized as scientific intrigue. A part of Jane couldn't blame her; besides the fact that it was happening to _her_ , it was extremely fascinating.

"The only abnormal thing they could detect besides tachycardia and vomiting was my brain wave pattern. For a couple days after the incident, they were wild. Didn't make sense at all. The doctor said one second my brain was sending waves indicative of being wide awake and the next second the waves that only occur during deep sleep appeared. No sustained patterns could be detected."

"That is extremely interesting," her mother murmured from behind steepled fingers. Her eyes pulled away from staring into space to look at her.

"Interesting and painful." Jane couldn't help but reply sharply. The throbbing in her head was steadily increasing, and her mother was only exacerbating it.

But her mother merely removed her fingers from their scholarly position to look once more at the nurse information. Jane allowed the silence to stretch.

"So, I hear you're taking a course in physics at Culver," her mother said finally. "Sounds like you're getting even further ahead of your classmates."

Oh yeah. Jane forgot that her academic success was the next priority on her mother's narcissistic list. The reminder made her shoulders slump minutely, exhausting working its way back into her limbs. She had been weak and easy to tire ever since 'that moment when you screamed so awesomely I should have recorded it and sold it to horror movie producers', as Darcy liked to describe it.

Darcy had been in almost every day, dutifully bringing her the work she was missing, along with an hour of good company. And every day the panic clawed at her throat, begging for a release at the thought of what her absence would do to her grades, her record, and every day Darcy was there to beat the panic back, reassuring her that she would overcome the setback. She wished Darcy was here now to battle the lump in her throat that was threatening to overcome her.

"Well, I was. Kinda haven't been there in weeks. It really makes the homework hard." She was proud that her voice didn't waver as she spoke. She would not cry in front of her mother.

"You'll manage." Her mother's firm tone brooked no argument on the subject. Jane found she had nothing to say, and settled for twirling on a strand of bedraggled hair.

"Knock knock!" Darcy's head peeked into the doorway. Behind her was her dad, wearing a harried expression, but Jane detected a slight quirk to his lips. Jane almost sighed with relief. Her mother stood abruptly, smoothing her pencil skirt.

"Hi!" Darcy walked into the room and thrust her hand out to Jane's mother, who blinked at the ferociously cheerful display.

"Hello, always great to see you…"

"Darcy. We met once at Jane's twelfth birthday party and the other time when she made National Honor Society." Darcy didn't look fazed at all to have been forgotten. Her father was attempting to not laugh.

"Well," her mother said, surprised and uncomfortable, "nice to see you again, Darcy. I'd better go and check if my intern hasn't completely ruined my lab today."

Bending, she quickly kissed Jane's head and gave her a light hug before turning and retreating to the door where her father stood, hands tucked behind his back and wearing an entirely too innocent expression.

"Ben."

"Elizabeth."

She turned back to look once more at Jane. "Bye, dear. Be good. I'll call you later."

Later would be Easter, and Jane was willing to wait far more than that for her next call. "Bye, mom."

Her parents did not stop to converse, merely nodding to each other once more in farewell before her mother's heels could be heard going down the hall. Darcy gave her thumbs up and a wink. Jane bit back a laugh. She definitely owed Darcy dinner and a movie.

Her fleeting amusement withered as her father stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Her eyes cut into him.

"A little warning would have been nice!" Her steadily increasing heart monitor filled the room. Her father's eyes flew to it before returning to her.

"Jane-"

"Don't 'Jane' me! That was unfair."

"She's your mother, Jane. She has a right to see you."

"Because she's _so_ charming to talk to. A real mother. You don't even have to talk to her. You have no idea the crap she gives me." She knew the second the words came out of her mouth she crossed a line. A truly angry look crossed his face for a brief second before he composed himself. Of course he knew.

"I understand why you're acting this way, and I think you need to rest-"

His calm delivery in the face of her anger made her snap."I've had enough rest! I feel like I'm resting my life away!"

Heat rose in her veins as her dad's mouth compressed into an anxious line at the heart monitor that refused to relax. She was getting upset, and it wasn't just because of her mother. She was ready to be out of this room, out of this hospital, and back to her life. Her mother was just the ugly catalyst. The burn of unshed tears filled her eyes.

"Well, she's gone now," Darcy chimed in, shattering the stony silence of the room. "Which means you and I can flip to the awful shows. I brought Doritos and honey mustard." She held up a plastic bag Jane hadn't noticed. In spite of herself she laughed weakly.

"You know I think that's gross."

"Yeah, well, good thing it's all for me. I wasn't planning on sharing anyway." Ripping the bag open she hopped up next to Jane and turned the television on.

"Jane, I'll be home if you need me." She turned to see her father's back as he left the room. A mix of resentment and regret intertwined with a petulance she knew was immature. But she was too emotional to find a way to make it up to him right now. Instead she turned her attention to Darcy, who was now eating Doritos slathered in honey mustard with gusto and watching a dramatic show.

"If you get crumbs on my bed we're going to have a problem."

"Relax, I'm perfect," she said around a mouthful of chips. "I dropped off your textbooks at home, marked in the sections we studied, and I compiled a list of your make-up tests. It's all waiting for you. In fact, I did such a fantastic and orderly job your grade's probably still better than mine."

The tears sprang to life again, the lump in her throat returning even larger and rendering her speechless. Darcy remained oblivious, munching away on her food as Jane was overcome with gratitude. Darcy was an invaluable friend, and guilt flooded Jane at the way she had let her bad attitude reign while Darcy was here. The least she deserved was good company.

So she rallied herself, forcing the lump back down her throat to reach over and grab some Doritos, avoiding the container of honey mustard.

" General Hospital? Really?"

"Excuse you, there's a reason it's been on for so long. You know, soap operas were very popular back in the day and actually began as a feminist movement-"

"Darcy, I'm in the hospital."

"Well, yeah. That's why I chose it."

Jane sat back and shook her head, unable to stop her smile and the warm feeling of belonging spreading through her.

* * *

" _Heed our warning, little mage. The power you seek has no master._ "

"Your wisdom and knowledge surpass even the All-Father," he said, concealing his surprise as the black rock flew back into his grasp from the shadows.

" _The All-Father has no concept of real sorcery. Only power. What good is power without control?_ " The ancient scroll appeared in front of him. He reached for it reverently.

"It is no good. It will destroy itself."

The three sisters smiled.

* * *

She walked into her house for the first time in weeks, and breathed in the familiar scent of home. Her dad dropped his keys in the bowl on the kitchen table and handed her bags to her, heading into the living room and turning on the television without a word. Jane suppressed a sigh; he had been taciturn and silent ever since her outburst yesterday. He'd come around, but an apology couldn't go wrong either. She hefted her bags and made her way to her bedroom, mulling over what she would say.

The sight of a raven head and long limbs sitting at her desk dampened her mood even further, but did not send her into a panic as it did the last time. Instead, she kicked the door closed and made her way to her bed, keeping him in the corner of her eye as he turned to watch her. She ripped off her scarf and began sorting her textbooks.

"You are injured."

"I'm not."

"Yes you are."

She dumped her hospital bag on her bed and turned to stare at him in annoyance and suspicion. He met her gaze evenly. She eyed her desk, trying to ascertain if any items were missing.

"You are," he said again, standing and moving to her. "You walk like a baby horse." Her anger flared along with her embarrassment. It wasn't exactly her fault she'd been confined to bed for three weeks.

"Is there a reason you keep showing up?"

"Is there a reason you're so hostile towards me? I did apologize for my behavior, Lady Jane."

The use of her name threw her off balance. "Yeah, well. 'Sorry' doesn't make up for threatening me with a knife."

He raised one eyebrow and stood, showcasing his regal clothing and height. "Then I shall endeavor to gain your good favor."

She crossed her arms and tried not to snort at his syntax. "Um, no. I think you're going to leave and stop appearing in my room."

He gazed at her for another moment before his eyes slid past her, the corner of his mouth lifting into a grin.

"And will you make me leave before even attempting to disprove my magic?" He opened his palm and his creation, which she had left floating behind one of her curtains weeks ago, whizzed by her to settle within his grasp. The limbs of the construction glowed a radioactive green between his fingertips. "You were quite keen to make me a fraud."

Jane stared at him, pale and young in the late morning sunlight, and much less sinister then she had ever seen him before. There was an air of light heartedness about him in the way he smiled confidently and the way he moved slowly and deliberately, obviously trying not to startle her. She bit her lip and stared obstinately at him, which he returned with boyish innocence. The scientist in her won after a quick internal struggle. What kind of researcher would she make if she allowed enigmas like him and his damned magic trick walk away without even trying to experiment?

"Give it to me." His smile grew at her demand, and he twirled a finger to send it spinning like a top in her direction. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It landed in her palm, where it ceased spinning, but remained glowing upon coming into contact with her skin. She held it up, her critical eye looking for any hint of trickery or explanation.

The silence grew as she continued to stare. Frustrated, she examined the corners, noting that one rigid limb flowed seamlessly into the adjacent, indicating the entire thing was one continuous structure. But where did it start? It had to start somewhere. But she couldn't find it, and the smirk on his face was only growing, so she tugged at a corner halfheartedly. It disconnected silently from one end, and she started in surprise. She looked up at him, and his eyes came up from her hands to meet hers. His expression, one of encouragement, amusement, and challenge, encouraged her to keep tugging. No more limbs came apart, but the shape began to disassemble the more she tugged and twisted. It reminded her of those magnetic connectors she used as a kid. Eventually she had broken down the entire thing to one long seamless piece that gave in wherever she applied pressure. Where it had been rigid and immovable before, it was now pliable and moved however she bent it.

She couldn't help the soft "wow" that escaped her. Ignoring the smug face she could see in the corner of her eye she moved to the window to inspect it under the light. The material it was made of felt strange, a combination of something like rubber and steel at the same time. It was something she had never seen, and she found herself with more curiosity than annoyance. She heard him take a few steps behind her.

"Well?"

"Hmm?" Jane barely heard him, concentrated as she was on learning about what she held. She bent it into a u-shape; it held.

"How will you disprove such a clear display of magic?"

His words broke her out of her examination, rounding on him readily. "There's a scientific way to explain everything I've seen so far."

Both of his eyebrows rose in an innocent gesture. "And what explanation do you have, Lady Jane?"

"I…"She looked down at his creation in her hands. On a whim she connected the two ends together to form a loop. The instant she did the entire thing hardened, becoming as unyielding as steel between her fingers. She looked up at him, encountering an expression that waited impatiently for an answer. Damn him.

"I can't explain it. Yet," she added hastily as she saw his mouth open to speak. "That doesn't mean there isn't a sensible explanation."

He scoffed. She felt the blood rise to her cheeks. "This could be an element no one's discovered yet. Or elements we already know interacting in ways we don't yet understand. Something that involves heat or something about physics no one's thought to observe…" Her voice tapered out self consciously as she realized she was practically waving the object under his nose. She took a step back and stared down at it in her hands.

"Or you're just messing with me and I'm a huge idiot," she mumbled, remembering quite suddenly that she was debating with a weird almost teenager that kept appearing in her bedroom with no apparent purpose and no explanations. Well, explanations she believed.

"Messing with you?" She looked up to see him looking quite confused.

"Er..fooling me," she said.

"Ah. Lady Jane, if I were to fool you it would have been much more impressive." It was the most honest sounding answer he'd given her so far, and Jane believed him. She was quickly learning that cockiness was one of his trademarks, evidenced by the tilt of his chin and his habit of looking down his nose at her.

"Right," she remarked, turning to look at her desk and pick up a pen, which she flicked nervously between her thumb and index finger. She heard him take another step before she looked up.

"I meant nothing by it. Only that I am being honest when I tell you it is magic, and I am not the raving lunatic you think me to be."

"Not magic," she said automatically, before reconsidering her sharp tone. "I mean, I still don't believe you. But you are kind of interesting." Kind of was an understatement.

"You don't believe me even when I show you?"

"No."

"And even though you think I am mad and dangerous you keep talking because I am…interesting?"

"That about sums it up, yeah."

He stared at her curiously, seeming to struggle to comprehend her. His jaw worked for a moment before he said, "Are all of your kind like this?"

"Kind?"

"Humans."

"Like what?"

"Unfathomable."

"Um, yeah." It was slightly easier this time to refer to herself as a separate race, as if he were an alien despite his human appearance. "I suppose. Everyone's got their quirks, if that's what you mean."

"Quirks." He seemed to roll the word around in his mouth as if he'd never heard of it. Jane looked anywhere but into the striking eyes that were slicing into her as if they could cut right to the parts that made sense. Jane couldn't help but feel a similar desire to find that sense as well. She continued to fiddle with the pen, staring awkwardly to the right.

"All of these mortals running around with all of these quirks," he said, lowering himself to sit cross legged on her floor like he had the last time he appeared. "How do you survive each other?"

"Oh please, most of us are pretty tame," she scoffed as she sat down in her desk chair, twisting to face him. "As if you have don't have any of your own."

"Quirks? I suppose I do."

When he didn't offer any more, she huffed and took the bait.

"Like?"

The index finger of the hand resting on his knee twitched, and his strange object rose silently to hover gently in front of her face.

"Magic. Right." She snatched it out of the air. "Anything else?"

"Still not impressive enough for you?"

She rolled her eyes at his jab. "What is this thing anyway?" She tugged around the loop she created earlier until she found the point where the ends disconnected. Flexibility returned to the object and she began to bend it into something new.

"It is called a legetøj, and it is a common child's toy where I come from. As a boy I would often use it to climb up to roofs I had no business being on." He grinned at a memory Jane couldn't see, but for some reason could picture quite clearly: a wiry boy with black hair using this toy as a rope, dangling from castle walls. It almost made her laugh before she remembered that he was probably lying or deluded. Or both.

His mouth turned up as if he could read her thoughts, but he made no comment on it. Instead he let the silence settle over them. Jane could feel him watching he as she turned her attention to the toy, willing answers to pop out of it.

"Can I keep this for a while?" She couldn't help but ask, as eager as she was to poke and prod at whatever the hell it was.

"I left it with you a while ago. It is yours to do with as you please."

"Thanks…" She searched for what to call him, vaguely remembering that he had told her something ridiculous that involved a title.

"Prince Loki, of Asgard." The words seemed to physically settle on him as he said them. His shoulders squared, and his chin came forward a fraction. Jane tamped down her initial urge to snort very impolitely. Of course he would have a name like that.

"Well. Thanks Loki."

He looked slightly taken aback, blinking rapidly twice before fixing her with the same piercing look as earlier. "You are welcome, Lady Jane."

She laughed. "Jane is fine. I don't have any title. I'm no lady."

This time he smiled. "No, you are not, despite your appearances. Jane didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted. She chose not to dwell on it. Instead she slid to the floor to sit across from him and hold up his gift.

"Got any other tricks up your sleeve?"

An hour later, Jane turned the lamp on as the sun set.


End file.
